The Xbox LIVE service has grown exponentially over the years, with over 35 million registered users using a range of entertainment, communication and gaming features. When signing up to use the service, all users must agree to abide by the Xbox LIVE Code of Conduct. As we all know, some gamers can display rather acerbic personalities, with some trying to bend and break the rules; these bad eggs need to be controlled in order to keep the service friendly and usable for all.
Xbox LIVE’s Policy and Enforcement team are charged with this task. In an otherwise typical Microsoft hallway, a black curtain stretches across the doorway to a large room. The whiteboard next to reads: “Please do not disturb. Sensitive material behind curtain.” This is where the team plies their trade. Hackers, cheaters, phishers, account thieves, game code modifiers, communication abusers – they help police it all, including actual crimes in some rare instances.
“If you’re playing a game on Xbox LIVE, and somebody snipes you from across the map and you drop the F-bomb, we’re not going to ban you – not for the occasional slip. We focus on the really bad stuff,” says Boris Erickson, Xbox LIVE Enforcement Unicorn Ninja. Yes, that is his actual job title.
“We are not here to be the arbiters of all speech. But there are certainly some kinds of communication on Xbox LIVE that crosses a line – racism, homophobia, sexism, offensive comments about nationalities, and more,” said Erickson.
Day in and day out, the inboxes of Erickson and his fellow Unicorn Ninja’s are filled with complaints of offensive actions, which they sort through and resolve. Their decisions result in users being asked to remove an offensive word or phrase from their profile to outright banning – or as Erickson likes to put it: “inviting them to not be our customer.”
“These are paid subscriptions we’re taking away, so we want to make sure we’re doing exactly the right thing,” added the Unicorn Ninja.
Boris Erickson, Xbox LIVE Enforcement Unicorn Ninja (actual job title)
The growth of Xbox LIVE
The team’s director, Stephen Toulouse (known widely by his Microsoft e-mail alias, Stepto), said that despite Xbox LIVE’s immense growth over the last several years, the number of complaints his team handles has remained tiny in proportion to the number of people who use the service.
“Looking at the stats, the cross-section of bad apples we deal with every day is small – typically less than one percent of the overall population,” Toulouse said. “The user complaint volume has tended to stay relatively flat compared to the line of new users. What that says to me is that our efforts are having an impact, and also that we’re broadening our audience. We’re bringing in different people that want to experience different things on Xbox LIVE, not just gaming, and at the end of the day that’s going to improve everything.”
When Toulouse joined Xbox LIVE in 2007, the entertainment service had not yet reached one million users online at the same time. “Enforcement was literally done by one guy with a spreadsheet who would go through the complaints once a week,” Toulouse said.
Though it took years to hit the one million user mark, it took one year to hit two million concurrent users. “We knew Xbox LIVE was going to explode,” Toulouse said. “We knew we were on the cusp of something huge, especially when we saw how many people came into the service with the launch of Halo 3.”
Unicorn Ninja equipment
Toulouse and the policy and enforcement team wanted to stay ahead of the game, and began building a team and developing a tool to help the team effectively police the growing community. The result was a software program called ‘Vulcan’ which is used to help enforcers handle and escalate complaints.
“It was designed on cocktail napkins, then coded and designed to allow people who do complaint investigations to do so in an efficient and accurate way,” Erickson said.
Enforcers are now using a brand-new version of this tool, called “Vulcan 2,” which makes sorting through complaints even faster. In fact, because all enforcers are experienced gamers, they also often use an Xbox controller to navigate their work. Enforcement agents will find out about rule violations via a complaint sent by an Xbox user or by experiencing it first-hand.
Stephen Toulouse
“The enforcement agents also play games,” Erickson explained. “Part of what we pay them for is to be out there in the community, listening for threats, looking for vulnerabilities, and reporting back to us.”
There are a handful of enforcements the team hands out ranging from a 24-hour ban to the most serious – banning an Xbox LIVE user for good.
Apart from being gamers, agents are “steeped and stewed” in Internet culture, as well as being experts in slang, acronyms, and more. Erickson says some of them can actually write in “l33t,” (pronounced “leet”); a hacker pidgin language that incorporates abbreviations and numbers in an attempt to bypass profanity filters.
“We always appreciate having a diversity of knowledge,” Erickson said of the team. “Everybody kind of brings their own little history to the table, and can interpret content in the way the rest of us can’t.”
Toulouse added that such diversity is key, though every member of the team shares a common goal. “They are absolutely passionate about safety on Xbox LIVE,” he said. “I personally believe that when you buy your Xbox LIVE subscription, you are getting us ‘free in the box.’ Microsoft has invested in us, and we are invested in trying to make sure the experience is good.”
The rest of the Unicorn Ninjas
Along with Toulouse and Erickson, Jason Coon and Andreas Holbrook round out the management team. The full team consists of numerous enforcement agents who work one of three shifts during the day to maximize coverage. Together, they cover 18 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Coon manages the agents, and Holbrook works with outside companies and law enforcement agencies on deeper investigations.
The team often has to deal with disturbing content and situations. “There’s a sort of gallows mentality, because we do have to deal with some pretty bad stuff during the course of our day,” Erickson explains. “We talk openly and frankly about it and the effect it has on all of us. You can’t help but need to talk after being exposed to the worst of the worst day in and day out.”
Sometimes this includes interacting with courts, law enforcement agencies, and other agencies. In one recent case, that included the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (MCMEC).
Erickson doubts there will ever be a time that enforcement is totally automated. “Most of the decisions need human eyes to keep it real, though we are moving into a realm where we’re applying more automation to the process,” Erickson said.
Jason Coon (left), Boris Erickson (front) and Andreas Holbrook
Xbox LIVE and human nature
What of this team whose sole mission it is to deal with “the worst of the worst” – what has it done for their views on humanity?
“I’ve learned that the vast majority of people on our service are out there having fun. We have a great community,” Toulouse said. “To the extent that we do see bad behaviour, it’s often tied to the belief that they’re anonymous, they won’t get caught, and we’re not looking. The vast majority of people are out there are trying to be excellent to each other.”
Despite having seen the worst of people, Erickson is still optimistic. “The reality of working in the wild, wild west of the internet is that most people just want to be creative, and to use our products in social ways and to connect to people. And for the ones that don’t, well, that just requires a bit of tweaking. We’re slowly crumbling the nexuses of bad behaviour.”
Unicorn Ninja keeps you safe on Xbox LIVE << Comments and views
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